Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Zhenzhong Zhao is a rising scholar at the intersection of hospitality management, service robotics, and consumer behavior. Their research focuses on how customers interact with and perceive service robots in real-world hospitality settings—particularly in robot restaurants and hotels. Zhao’s most-cited work (2024, 26 citations) uses text-mining and sentiment analysis of online reviews to uncover how the robot dining experience drives customer recommendation behavior, offering actionable insights for operators of AI-driven eateries. In a complementary study (2024, 3 citations), Zhao explores the puzzling phenomenon of hotel guests ignoring service robots, conceptualizing physical engagement as a critical missing link in human-robot interaction. Through unobtrusive observation and interviews, this work challenges assumptions about seamless technology adoption. Zhao’s contributions are notable for blending computational methods with qualitative depth, providing a nuanced understanding of when and why robotic service fails to engage. As the hospitality industry rapidly automates, Zhao’s research is essential reading for scholars and practitioners aiming to design robots that guests actually want to interact with—and recommend to others.